Between norms and facts: questions for a sociological analysis of the process of social participation in public administration

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to map and discuss various questions put forward in connection with a political sociology of the social participation processes in public governments, having as an empirical reference the experience of creating institutional spaces for social participation (either in a direct form, such as the cases of participative budgets, or in an indirect form, through the new means of representation in councils, committees or forums of different types and forms) taking place nowadays in Brazil. The main concern of the article is to call attention to the necessity of overcoming the polarization, that exists in the field of studies about the processes of social participation, between theoretical normative approaches and empirical descriptive investigations. In other words, a significant accumulation in terms of the mapping and description of the processes of participation can be noted, but progress in terms of the construction of conceptual instruments that make possible the creation of explicative– comprehensive models of the investigated processes is still lacking. Key-words: civil society, state, social participation.